A friend of mine asked me how I could possibly be coping with a divorce on top of pregnancy. I explained that, for me, it was imperative that I break it up into smaller pieces so I didn't get too overwhelmed. After all, it's terribly easy to get overwhelmed with ANYTHING while pregnant (especially the end of pregnancy when even the tho﻿ught of standing up is overwhelming).

Trying to figure out what life is supposed to look like without your husband, without a job, without the family you've known and loved for more than a decade, without all the familiar and supportive hands that helped you move forward... it is oppressively overwhelming. Looking at the big picture is simply too taxing at this point, so in my mind, I've cut things into more manageable chunks. The chunks still suck, mind you. I mean, if you hate eating liver, cutting it up into bite-sized portions doesn't make the experience of eating liver any more pleasurable, but it does enable you not to constantly choke from having it shoved in all at once.

Thus far, I've only experienced two pieces of the divorce. First was telling his parents. Getting his stuff out of the house and completing the renovation is the second. Each small piece, though devastating in its own right, is less menacing because I don't allow those pieces to carry the weight of the entire divorce. Each is its own monster, and like Mega Man defeats one "evil robot" after the other, I'm tackling one "bad bot" at a time so I'm not stuck fighting a bunch of crazy bots at once. I can take a breather, recharge, and take comfort in my tiny successes so that I remember that I'm capable of surviving.

His decision, however much it hurts, will never actually kill me. It certainly feels like it might sometimes, but as I push forward, more and more "success" is proving that I'm much stronger and much more capable than I'd realized.